What does Rupert want?
He doesn’t just want one of his children to take over the family business. This is not just about having a proper and respectful heir—his son, James, as everyone in the company and family acknowledges. That isn’t the prosaic reason contract negotiations with Peter Chernin, his long-time No. 2, broke down.
It’s much much grander than that and operatic and dysfunctional and, well, sweet.
He wants all his children around him, as close as they’ll come. Closer if he can figure out a way.
He wants his daughter Elisabeth, 40, who, in a tiff with her father, walked out of the company 10 years ago, and who has since assembled one of the world’s largest independent television productions companies, to put that aside and move to Los Angeles. He wants her take over the entertainment properties—Fox Studios and network—of News Corp. When I said to him how satisfied Elisabeth must be running her own company, he scowled and muttered, "She’ll never get rich doing that." Then, he solicited suggestions on work his son-in-law, Matthew Freud, the most famous PR man in London, might get in Los Angeles.
(Rupert Murdoch and wife, Wendi. AP Image)
He wants his son Lachlan, 37, who, in a tiff with his father, walked out of the company four years ago and moved to Sydney, to run the 70% of the Australian newspaper market News Corp. owns. It was Peter Chernin who openly disparaged Lachlan and who helped cause the rift between father and son—thereby pretty much assuring that Murdoch would someday, somehow get rid of Chernin. His first-born son’s departure was probably among the toughest moments in the father's career. He loves his first son most of all because his first son loves newspapers. If he could swing it, he’d, in fact, like to get Lachlan out of Australia, and have him run all the company’s papers, thereby having his son spend more time in New York and London (Rupert is finally admitting how tough a trip it is to Australia).
He wants his son James, 36, who he believes to be the most brilliant man on earth (although even Rupert seems to admit that James is a little…cold) in the next office. James, being brilliant, has worked in China, and then took over BskyB in London, and now runs all the operations in Europe and Asia, precisely because he knows it's safer to keep his distance. But now his father has cleared the way and James may well be cornered.
It will have crossed the father’s mind of course that with his three media-executive children (his oldest daughter, Prue, who perhaps he gets along with best, is a housewife in Sydney; his two youngest children, Grace and Chloe, are 7 and 5, respectively) all working in close proximity, they will, inevitably, fall upon each other in their competition not just for the top job but for his affections.
He can live with that.
He gets what he wants, to talk to no one else but his own children all day long. I can relate.
More of Newser founder Michael Wolff's articles and commentary can be found at VanityFair.com, where he writes a regular column. He can be emailed at michael@newser.com
